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The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

December 2, 2019May 9, 2025 2618

I came across this today and broke up laughing. These are seriously clever! Thanks to the Washington Post. I wasn’t aware of their neologism contest, but I am now! Read and enjoy. Pass it along.

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.

George Singleton

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

Harlan Ellison

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

William Faulkner

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

John Campbell

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

Stephen Wright

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

John Irving

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.

John Legend

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

Lisa See

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Will Rogers

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

It always comes down to characters, and individual stories about courage.

Steven Bochco

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

Stan Lee

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.